


Last Sunrise

by HalfASlug



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:17:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7797925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfASlug/pseuds/HalfASlug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If this was your last sunrise, what would you do?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a drabble. Oops. Also: angst warning.

Since Krop Tor, everything and nothing has changed.

They’re still the stuff of legends and best friends. He’s still using his smile and charm as a disguise. She’s still not sure if she’s as good as he says she is.

Both of them know, whilst tired, aching and so, so scared, they nearly kissed in the console room. Rose can still smell the spacesuit on his normal outfit and hear his panicked laughter as he changed the subject.

Everything is the same, but sometimes he looks at her and she knows he’s thinking about that moment. She always is.

This morning, a couple of weeks later, is one of the rare occasions that she isn’t. The cold dew from the grass greener that she’s used to is seeping through her jeans but the air is growing steadily warmer so she doesn’t mind. The inky blue-black of the cloudless sky is changing, the tones brightening with every second as the pale turquoise sun emerges. It’s like nothing Rose has ever seen before and that, at this point in her life, is saying something.

With her hands resting on her knees, she can see the new thread bracelet she was given the previous evening. She plucks the deep red material, marvelling again at how much softer it is than it looks. In the years she’s been travelling with the Doctor, she’s picked up thousands of trinkets and gifts, but this one is troubling her more than most.

Well, not troubling her exactly. More making her thoughts drift to places she usually keeps them away from.

The bracelet is from Lew, a friend she made last night at a festival the Doctor had taken her to. In between the dancing, music and laughter, she had found the locals to be some of the kindest and welcoming aliens she has ever met. Even though they were at least a foot taller than everyone there, her and the Doctor had been given food and shelter without any questions.

The Doctor had explained that the festival was in fact a daily occurrence on the planet.

“But it’s huge!” she had exclaimed, admiring the feast being used as a buffet. “Why go to all this effort every night?”

His expression had been deliberately blank. It never meant anything good. “It’s a celebration of life. The average life span here is one of this planet’s years.”

“What’s that on Earth?”

“A week.”

“They only live for a  _ week? _ ”

“So every night, they celebrate,” the Doctor finished like she hadn’t spoken, “because it could very well be their last chance to.”

After that, Rose found it difficult to stop thinking about life spans and wondering how old her new friends were, though there were plenty of distractions. All of them were so much younger but closer to death than she was. Of all the culture shocks she had experienced, this was one of the hardest to wrap her mind around.

At the end of the evening, as the party stragglers headed home, Lew handed her the bracelet and explained it was traditional to make the simple design for anyone who had made an impact on their lives. Her own thin arms were covered in them.

It had been her fifth festival.

“Watching the sun rise?”

Rose doesn’t turn to see the Doctor sit next to her on the hill. “Don’t think I’ve seen one with a sun this colour yet.”

He launches into an explanation about the atmosphere and gases and prisms but all she hears is the beating of her heart, counting down.

She knows why he brought her here.

The Doctor finishes talking and is wiggling his eyebrows at her, obviously expecting a follow up question, witty observation or recognition but the moment is all wrong for territory as familiar as that. There’s something about it not being night but not quite morning that makes it like they are existing outside of time itself.

The first haze of green breaks the horizon as she asks her question.

“If this was your last sunrise, what would you do?”

His tiny smile is colder than he probably intends it to be. “It isn’t.”

“Could be.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Don’t be daft.”

The Doctor shuffles closer to her. If he was human she would be able to feel his body heat but he isn’t and she doesn’t. It’s another reminder of how different he is. Or how different she is. It’s hard to work out which way around it is sometimes.

“You got a gitrish!” he points out, poking the bracelet she’s been contemplating all morning. “Thought you might. Can’t take you anywhere without you making friends.”

His pride in her warms her more than the rising sun has managed so far. “You know me. Travelling the universe, breaking hearts and collecting friendship bracelets.”

“It’s a bit more than that, but essentially the same idea.”

Rose hums without really listening. The hardest part of understanding the culture she has emerged herself in for the last twelve hours is how anything could mean so much to Lew and the others. How can they possibly cram full lives into just a week? They grow up and learn everything they need to know to become productive members of society. Form relationships. Fall in love. Have children who will go on to do the same.

There are many weeks of her life that Rose can’t remember at all. For Lew, that’s her entire existence.

“I can’t stop thinking about how many of the people we spoke to last night won’t be at tonight’s celebration,” she says, staring determinedly at the sky. She has no idea what expression she’s wearing but she doesn’t want the Doctor to see it.

“Some of them won’t see this morning.”

His brutal reply makes her flinch. She steels herself. If she’s here so he can make a point then she’s not going to run away. She has her own point to prove as well.

Whatever he thinks about her and her species, she isn’t weak.

“It doesn’t seem fair. They could do so much more if they had the chance.” Rose finally looks at him but he’s staring at his shoes. It’s not like she’s trying to upset him, but he is the one who started it. He should know her better than to think she would take the hint and be quiet about it. “Is this how you see humans?”

It doesn’t look like he’s breathing and it takes him almost a full minute to answer. “Yes.”

Now he meets her eye and, for the first time, Rose thinks she understands some of the darkness that is always rippling below the surface. The people she met last night she only knew for a few hours, but it is the same as her knowing someone for almost six years. For all she knows, she could be one of the best friends that Lew has ever had.

“How long could you live for?” she asks.

“Millennia. If I’m careful,” he adds with a grin.

Maths has never been one of Rose’s strong suits, but even she can work out that her life is even more of a blip to him than Lew’s is to her. It makes her feel impossibly small.

To distract herself, she fiddles with the friendship bracelet again. It doesn’t work and she still wants to know if in a few decades time the Doctor will have something of hers that he keeps so he can remember the ghost of the girl who loved him.

At the party, she had spent time with the Doctor, dancing and admiring the scenery. She had been so lost in the bubble they create around themselves that she didn’t stop to think that she had been missing huge portions of the locals’ lives. A desperation grips her and she wants to go back, to take advantage of all the time she so recklessly wasted. She can joke around with the Doctor any time but she will never get another chance to tell Lew and the others how wonderful she thinks they are.

It must show on her face because Doctor shifts so he’s leaning in front of her.

“Rose?”

“You didn’t answer me.”

His concern becomes confusion. “Sorry?”

“If this was your last sunrise, what would you do?”

Shards of blue and green spread across the sky. It makes the Doctor’s shuttered expression colder somehow. “I’ve never thought about it.”

She can tell he’s lying. “Think about it now.”

He sits back and exhales. Whether it’s the answer he’s debating or whether or not he should be truthful, Rose can’t tell.

Finally, as the sun comes into view and announces a new day, he smiles. “I’d wonder where the time has gone.”

After spending the morning thinking she can empathise with him, Rose is thrown by his reply. It seems flippant of him, or worse, like he’s brushing her off, when she was expecting him to open up at least a little.

Then again, she has only had this perspective for a few minutes. She can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to live so long and then face death. Perhaps he’s being as honest as he can be.

“What about you?” he asks, bumping his shoulder into hers. “Your last sunrise. What’s your to do list?”

It’s the question that has been buzzing around her brain for hours now and her response is ready to go. Rose once spent a terrifying ten seconds watching the TARDIS leave her and preparing to go back to her jobless existence. She knows the power of regret.

If this day was truly to be her last, then she would hate ending her life with unsaid words choking her.

Ironically, those same words are too jumbled for her tight throat at the minute, so she just kisses him instead.

Her hands cup his face to keep him there, though he doesn’t show any sign of backing away. The seconds drag on until he finally responds, his dry lips moving along hers. He keeps his hands to himself, but it doesn’t feel like rejection, not when she can sense how he’s trembling beneath her palms.

It’s their first proper kiss, but it tastes like the last. Their movements are gentle against their fragile hopes. Both of them are still holding back and Rose feels cheated. She could easily fall into him, crawl into his lap and beg, plead and demand he let her stay there. Now she has some inclination of what it all must be like for him, it seems cruel to still want it all with him.

On this morning, with whatever stalemate they maintain stumbling blindly into no man’s land in a haze of dawn light, the rules don’t apply. It is like something is just starting, but, in Rose’s bones, she knows it’s almost over. It has always been almost over.

What happens next, she doesn’t know, but she selfishly wants him to tell their story, sing their song and celebrate every day they manage to get together for the rest of his life. If she has anything to do with it, then he will never forget her. She might die, but she will still stay with him forever.

As much as she wants to spend the rest of her time travelling with him she’s desperate for it to all fade to black now so she never has to learn how it unravels and destroys them. She doesn’t know if she can bare it being something violent and sudden, or if it will be worse if they slowly fade and everything they had and were wastes away.

She’s shaking too much to keep kissing him. Her eyes stay closed, but her hands slip to his neck. His Adam’s apple moves, like he’s trying not to cry. She’s trying as well, with less success. It doesn’t surprise her. After all, he’s had more practise with this sort of thing.

“Can we leave now?” she whispers against his lips. She thinks she might also mean leave the conversation and the honesty they’ve danced perilously close to as well as the planet.

He slowly pulls away with a nod, but waits for her to break the embrace.

The part that hurts the most is that she knows they will never talk about this again because it’s her that can’t face it. The problem isn’t that she’s weak and never has been; it’s that neither of them are strong enough. She can’t see how anyone could be.

She stands up and can feel his eyes cataloguing the movement, memorising her for future reference, and it hurts too much to look at.

“Of course we can, Rose Tyler,” he says and she hears both an apology and eulogy. “Of course we can.”


End file.
